xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Justice Barrington Black had to recuse himself from a “dangerous dog” case when he learned that his own dog appears in the background in a video for the defense, frolicking in a park with the defendant-dog (London, England).
Cambodian police detained (on a charge unrelated to hygiene) a prominent, 81-year-old Buddhist guru who has preached for 60 years that religious purity requires that no water ever touch his skin or hair (Phnom Penh).
Norway repealed its law that barred intoxicated persons from voting in elections.
Researchers Steven Potter (Georgia Tech) and Guy Ben-Ary (University of Western Australia, Perth) have created a robotic “arm” that makes a painter’s rudimentary brush strokes at Ben-Ary’s lab, directed over the Internet by its “brain” (composed of 50,000 rat neurons in a petri dish) in Potter’s lab, according to a July report from BBC News. According to Potter, the brain is not yet classically “intelligent” but does “adapt” (i.e., experience less chaos) and thus strokes more smoothly over time.
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd
NEWS OF THE WEIRD